Daughters of Ruin

by K. D. Castner

Rhea unraveled the cloth. Inside was the sigil crest of Kendrick and Valda Ironclaw. It rolled out of her hand and clattered to the floor. The lost heir of House Ironclaw had been found.

  Endrit was king of Meridan, son of Kendrick and Valda.

  Her father had killed them both.

  Rhea felt a crushing weight. She was not grieved, however. She was furious.

  How could he have been so stupid?

  How could he leave them so exposed?

  Rhys would have never been so sloppy as to leave the heir alive, under their noses, already beloved throughout the city.

  Rhys would have never been so disappointing.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Cadis

  Cadis lunged at Iren’s face like a feral dog. The shock and viciousness of it made both forget their training for a moment, as Cadis smashed into Iren and they both hit the stone floor. The moment passed. Cadis pinned Iren on her back and struck twice with her elbow. Iren raised her forearms in front of her face and took the two blows.

  Iren rocked her hips and turned her shoulders, escaping the hold.

  Cadis bounced up and wheeled around with a kick at Iren’s temple.

  A thoughtless move, motivated by the desire to hurt her as much as possible.

  Iren brought her left arm up to her ear and blocked the kick. Her brace, lined with lockpicks and throwing blades, took the blow. Cadis groaned.

  In return Iren had an open strike at Cadis’s other leg. Iren hammered her shin into the soft hinge of Cadis’s knee, just as it strained to hold all of her weight. Cadis roared in pain.

  Cadis had never felt so outmatched. It was as if Iren had been hiding her true gifts all those years, behind glasswork and needlepoint. Yet another secret.

  Cadis could barely move fast enough to check Iren’s attacks, and quickly her blocks would begin to break even if she did.

  Her knee throbbed. Iren seemed to target it twice more, shifting the fight so that Cadis would have to present the swollen knee.

  Iren fought angrily. Her strikes hit home. Cadis was as much taken aback by the skill as by the emotion behind it.

  Cadis took another battering strike to the knee and nearly crumpled. Iren took the opening and jarred her chin with a right hook. Cadis blacked out for an instant and woke up on the floor. Iren was atop her.

  It would be over soon, she thought.

  An arm appeared around Iren’s waist just as she was about to pummel Cadis, and she was lifted backward.

  Jesper.

  They were Jesper’s arms.

  Iren kicked twice, both heels striking his knees, but he held. Cadis wanted to shout, “Be careful. Pin her arms,” but her jaw was so numb she couldn’t even feel it. Iren thrashed in Jesper’s grip, but long enough only to drop down a little to free her left elbow. With a flick of her wrist, a throwing blade—no more than a flat shaft of weighted metal, fell into her palm. Iren stabbed it backward, into Jesper’s left thigh.

  His hold loosened.

  She pulled the blade out, turned, and stabbed it again into his side, near his lowest rib. She moved too fast for him to react. By then he was overcome by the tidal wave of pain. Blood began to flow from the wounds along his left side.

  Iren stepped away from him. “Don’t touch me,” she said. “Never touch me.”

  Jesper looked at her without understanding. He put his hands on the holes but hadn’t the strength to apply any pressure.

  Jesper wobbled, then crashed to the stone floor. Cadis found herself already on her feet. When Iren turned to face her, Cadis was too close. In all her life, Cadis had never put so much behind a punch. Iren turned just in time to meet it.

  She flew, as if kicked by a stallion, and hit a potted planter. Cadis ran over to Jesper, who lay on his back, pale and motionless. No one else was around. Hypatia, Pentri, and the others must have slipped out earlier. No one else was around to help.

  “Are you out of your mind?” screamed Cadis, but Iren was still clutching the side of her face and couldn’t respond. Cadis set about stanching Jesper’s wounds. She tore his loose muslin shirt as bandages. If the cut on the thigh was deep enough, it could hobble him. If he didn’t lose too much blood, he would live. That was if Iren hadn’t tipped her blades with any poison or rot mold.

  Cadis worked on Jesper with her limited field-medic training. She couldn’t even look at Iren, though she made sure to keep her in peripheral sight at all times. “Have you been spying on me this whole time?” asked Cadis.

  “Only since we got here,” said Iren.

  “Not before?”

  “Not on you.”

  “Then why wouldn’t you tell me?” said Cadis.

  “Because you believed, like a child, you believed the war was over and that we would be ‘sister queens.’ You believed in the lie. And maybe that was necessary, for all of us to survive, but not anymore.”

  “It wasn’t a lie.”

  “It was a lie, Cadis. Declan killed Kendrick and Valda. I’ve been trying to find evidence. The war was his doing. When he failed to take Pelgard, he took us as hostages. No one would accuse him of usurping the throne with us as his shields. He killed Tola because she was too old—she saw the maneuvering. Suki was only a toddler. She broke, of course, but at least she was controllable.”

  Cadis knew that Iren was the more unwilling ward of the Protectorate, but she thought it was homesickness, or the persistent belief that she was above Declan’s authority. But Cadis never knew the depth of Iren’s antagonism. And if she were to judge, Cadis could find no blame in it.

  If Declan had started the war, then he was the cause of Iren’s father’s death, and perhaps even worse, her separation from her mother, Queen Malin.

  It was so much to fathom all at once. And yet Cadis couldn’t help but feel that if Iren had only trusted her all those years ago, as they’d held each other in the dark of her chamber, then they both would have been better for it.

  Perhaps they would have succeeded where Iren had obviously failed. And all these years later, Cadis wouldn’t be saddled with the false memory of them together, forging what she thought was a lifelong friendship.

  “If all that’s true, why not join the rebels? Convince your mother and ally with Findain?”

  Iren shook her head.

  “Why not?” said Cadis, already sick of Iren’s withholding attitude.

  “They had nothing to do with the attack at the ball. They’ve barely got their secret handshakes together, much less a strategy.”

  How did she know all this? And why in the name of all the gods had she been so distrusting?

  “So the attack at the Revels was Declan again?” said Cadis.

  “Well,” said a voice from the doorway, “I like to think I helped.”

  Both turned. Jesper lifted his head from the floor. It was Hiram, with a shinhound at his feet. He must have been the recipient of the carrier bird—the one sent by the spy on the road. He had a giant bandage wrapped around his face, big enough to cover a severed cheek.

  “How did you get past the guards?” asked Cadis.

  She was all too aware that she had no weapon and he had a beast that had been bred to crush the shins of soldiers in its jaws.

  Hiram made an open, conciliatory gesture with his palms, since he could not smile. “I had an appointment,” said Hiram.

  “Ismata, heel,” said Iren, but the shinhound had no reaction. Hiram made a garbled laugh through his soaked bandages. “A good try. But I’m afraid I had to kill that one. All the ones you met, actually. This one stayed in the kennels.”

  Iren squinted at the dog, as if trying to recognize it. Hiram’s kennels were in a vast network of rooms, deep beneath the castle.

  Hiram looked around the room. “Where is that Hypatia Terzi? So intrusive when she’s not needed, and so absent when she is.”

  Cadis felt Jesper tense at the mention of his cousin’s name. When she spared a glance at him, he winked, as if to say he was less incapacitated than he seemed and could help
if she needed it. A gallant gesture, but Cadis knew a shinhound would get the better of him now that he had lost so much blood.

  She turned instead to Hiram. She was still Archon Basileus of the castle, and she would not be menaced here. “Why would you meet with Hypatia?” she asked.

  “Didn’t you know that the little shrew is none other than first among the Munnur Myrath? Of course not. No one ever sang it to you on a stage. Why would Cadis—naive to the world—know anything about her people?”

  Cadis couldn’t tell if he was lying in part or in whole. It made no other sense, she supposed, for him to be there. But for Hypatia to lead the rebels when she could just as easily help Findain as master in the common hall—that made no sense at all.

  As usual, Iren was a step ahead.

  “Are you cutting a deal for yourself, or are you still lapdog to that usurper?”

  “Lapdog, I’m afraid,” said Hiram with a shrug. “We give Findain to Hypatia’s rebels and support their claim to rule.”

  “You spark civil war here, to turn your attention on Tasan,” said Iren.

  “Close,” said Hiram. “We’ll climb the spire first. I’ll say hello to your mother.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Cadis. “Hypatia’s second in her guild already. She doesn’t need you to rule.”

  “She does if she wants your chair,” said Hiram. “Leave it to the Dains to betray even themselves.”

  Cadis realized three things as plainly as if they were the choral soliloquys in a PilanPilan operetta. First, Iren was right about everything—Declan’s plot, certainly, but also that Cadis had been woefully naive all these years and her people would pay for it.

  Second, Hypatia Terzi would forever be her mortal enemy. The old Cadis would have hoped a puppy-dog hope that they could make peace. But she knew that Hypatia had cleared the room of guards on purpose, to remove witnesses and to deny her involvement.

  And the third thing that Cadis realized was that Hiram had come to do Hypatia a favor in return for the rebels inciting civil war in Findain—and that favor was to make sure neither Iren nor Cadis survived this conversation.

  Cadis saw the metallic flicker behind Hiram, who had stood the entire time in such a way as to hide his right hand. It was a crossbow, sized for a one-handed shot. The bolt was for her, she knew, because Hypatia had made her the primary target.

  The shinhound would be for Iren—a bit of poetic return for her meddling with his beasts, and also to give him the opportunity to reload. A shinhound was also the only creature in the room faster than Iren.

  Cadis forced herself to think beyond the surface of the situation, where she would normally reside, trying to speak with Hiram and convince him not to shoot. Instead she thought of Marta and all her mornings in the castle yard shooting arrows at straw soldiers.

  She had to ask herself what type of shot Hiram would take. One to the face? An emotional response, the most certain kill, but only if it pierced through the eye. Otherwise the bolt might hit her scalp, tear it like a rind of fruit, but leave her alive. Was he so confident for that, or would he aim for the heart—the most practical target? He could miss by a hand on every side and still be done with her.

  Or would he shoot at her gut—the easiest target, and the one that guaranteed a protracted and excruciating death, as she bled out? A skilled magister could save her, but not before Hiram finished with Iren and came back for a second shot.

  All Cadis had to do was decide: Was he arrogant, practical, or cruel? Unfortunately, she knew him to be all three.

  “You were good pupils,” he said, raising his crossbow, pointing at Cadis. “And you would have made good queens.”

  Cadis stood in a protective stance over Jesper. “Then why turn on us? Why destroy all the work of the Protectorate?” She was simply stalling for more time. Sure Iren had a plan. It couldn’t be to wrestle the shinhound.

  “Because good queens are not obedient queens,” said Hiram. Then he commanded the shinhound, “Catch!”

  The beast ran toward Iren, growling and watering already at the mouth. Cadis prayed that Iren was not so foolish as to think she could drop the hound with one of her throwing blades—or even three.

  Iren stared it down. The hound readied to leap. Iren snapped her fingers twice.

  The hound skidded to a stop and awaited instruction. Both Cadis and Hiram stared openmouthed at the sudden reversal. Iren spoke a few words to the dog in old Corentine and then answered the obvious question. “I spent some time in the kennels.”

  Then she spoke another bit of Corentine. The hound turned and ran at Hiram. The magister took a step back, but even in a state of panic, he must have known he had no chance to get away. In the half second before the shinhound jumped toward his neck, Hiram remembered his mission, turned to Cadis, and fired.

  Iren ran up to Hiram, whose screams had begun to gargle as the shinhound’s teeth punctured his windpipe. She had a blade in her hand. The shinhound stepped aside at her command, champing its bloody jowls. For a long moment Iren stood over the magister and watched him grab his own neck, trying to keep the blood from spilling.

  He struggled to speak, and when he did, it was airy, like wind through an open flute. Iren spoke over him anyway. “I should have killed you in Meridan,” she said. She lowered to a knee and stabbed Hiram in the heart. Iren made sure the magister was dead with a technique that Hiram himself had taught her.

  Cadis watched all this as if it happened on a stage.

  Her vision, steadily darkening, would lower the curtain. Iren would smile and help their mentor to his feet. They would clap each other on the back for a brilliant show. But such a hope was an old comforting naiveté that she could no longer sustain, simply by virtue of knowing what it was. The real world was more complicated, more vivid with its pains and wonders. The real world was beyond the imaginings and theatrics that let her march blindly into the common hall, hoping the people would follow her command. And for that she had already paid in Jesper’s blood.

  Cadis looked down at the crossbow bolt that pierced the back of her right hand—all the way through, like a rotisserie rod skewered through a pheasant breast.

  Cadis laughed. This was her second punishment, she thought, though the pain hadn’t yet fully reached her. And this was her prize, she thought, for having finally seen it coming with clear eyes.

  She had known Hiram would shoot for the belly, an irrational and hateful last swipe. Cadis had put her hand out at the last moment, as the bolt punched from the back, through the palm, and pinning it to her leather jerkin. Even through her hand, the bolt had cut through the hardened leather and stabbed a little into her stomach.

  Cadis tried to pull it out. Her hand slid over the bolt—a pain as loud as a thunderclap, and a wave of vomit surged up to her throat. Her knees wavered, and she fell.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Suki

  It was all over (they’d won (except there was no “they” (and “winning” was also vague (meaningless (so really, some people had done something that kind of resembled success, depending on what they’d expected to achieve in the first place (Declan was bleeding in a dungeon, so to bloody hell with definitions)))))).

  But that was after.

  And after that:

  Black, black, black.

  Nothing but. Cold. Hard.

  (Hand on the wall.)

  Hand cut at the wrist.

  (For a second the meat looked like a salmon steak (pink, raw flesh, round bone in the middle.)

  A fountain of cherry sauce (his eyes horrified—who would dare unhand the king?)). (But he wasn’t no king) (!).

  Just another ambitious Meridan soldier (up-jumped) (class climber) with a house no older than a jar of Tasanese pickles.

  Endrit (Taylin) was the real king.

  Taylin, Taylin (even as she walked in the black, she said it (and it sounded strange (but no less welcome (on her tongue)))).

  They’d hunched behind a wagon cart together in the keep yard (sn
uck past the walls through the smuggler’s tunnel (walked past Endrit’s home (door still busted (Rhea looked at it ashamed (that it was the rightful king they’d been abusing all those years))))).

  If she had any decency at all, she’d beg Endrit for mercy (for killing his parents (or having a father who did it, anyway)).

  Suki didn’t feel the need to apologize, because she had been trying to tell him all this time that he was good enough for her (and the compliment turned out to be true (and Rhea was the one unfit for the king’s bed (which she should have also apologized about))).

  They snuck through Cheapside, so late that the taverns were closed and the bakeries were open.

  No one stopped them.

  (This time Suki had no problem walking between them and telling Rhea to move over (so she could be next to Endrit (Rhea obeyed for once)).) She probably spent the whole time going back over every conversation they had ever had (their whole lives) trying to remember if she’d done anything worthy of execution by the new king.

  She had dropped the letter from Valda (Endrit had read it next (took it like he took everything (in stride) as if being the lost heir was something every stable boy grew into)). He said, “Maybe this will save my mother” (meaning Marta (which was a good-person thing to say)). And that was all he cared to discuss at the moment (and so they left to go invade the keep (and Suki saw Rhea palm the crest (stuff it in her pocket (but Suki would kill her if she tried anything, so she didn’t bother to make a fuss over it (and so she took it in stride (the confident thing to do)))))). The night wasn’t even that dark.

  Now it was all black, black, black.

  Her hand on the wall.

  Wet up to her waist in wastewater.

  When they hid behind the wagon, Endrit offered Suki a drink of water from the wineskin. She took it and put it to her lips (but didn’t drink) just to be close to him. They had a moment’s rest. The moon was hanging low already. (Soldiers everywhere on the keep gates, balconies (and even patrolling the yard where the Revels tents had been just a few days prior (after her horse ride in the coliseum, Suki had presented a juggling routine (knives, torches, necklaces from the ladies in attendance))).)